Always quirky, sometimes sweet speculative fiction

Month: March 2019

Alita: Battle Angel – My Thoughts

some of my earliest anime/manga purchases – yes, that is a VHS tape ;p

I’ve been a Battle Angel Alita fan for over 20 years. I first saw the anime while still in high school and I’ve been collecting the manga for 18 years (it was one of the first manga I ever bought!). As if I wasn’t going to go see the movie.(it did take me a couple of weeks to get to it though, with camping, road trips, and getting away from the children ;p )

I went in wary, after all western adaptions of anime hits have not always produced the best results…  I went in curious to see what would be changed, how much would be added, how much of the world and its future and history would be put in. I went in cautiously optimistic because of my long held love for this series.

And I was not disappointed.

The movie wasn’t without flaw. It suffered a bit from ‘put all the things in!’ syndrome, but it felt more like an enthusiastic I’m-a-big-fan driven urge, not wanting newcomers to miss out on any of the coolness that is Alita. This did cause it to get a bit shuffled around, and sometimes subplots lost traction because there were so many that sometimes the romance subplot or the motorball subplot wouldn’t even get a mention for six or seven scene. The problem didn’t  reach movie-ruining levels for me (though I’m left wondering if someone with no knowledge of the world might have felt somewhat lost).

Several of the iconic moments (Ido pulling Alita’s remnants from the scrapyard, Alita holding Hugo’s hand hanging off the side of cables of Tiphares/Zalem, ect) were beautifully rendered, and though only touched on it was fun seeing some of the little nods to the fans (like the quick look at Jashugan). The special effects are great – but you probably already knew that considering who made it and the availability of trailers.

I was a little irked by some of the name changes, Daisuke to Dyson is understandable for an American audience (though why ‘Dyson’ is he a vacuum cleaner?’) but what kept niggling at me was Tiphares to Zalem. It threw me every damn time.

just try and tell me she isn’t weirdly perfect for the role

I love love loved Rosa Salazar as Alita. Her voice, her acting, her look (which admittedly is largely cg, but shh) were all great fits for one of my all-time favourite characters.

The emotion remained there well too, (SPOILER ALERT y’all) I still teared up as Hugo’s elbow joint breaks and he plummets away, even though I knew it was coming (and have seen and re-seen that scene into probably the triple digits by now between the anime and manga), and I really enjoyed the romance elements (though the scene with the heart didn’t work quite as strongly as I think it was supposed to).

Overall I was pretty happy with it, and would be up for any sequels, but worry a bit how non-fans might struggle with it.

 

ps. if you liked it and haven’t read the manga do it! Do it because Sechs is AWESOME. (also say that last bit out loud to a friend beside you on the couch like I did and you’ll have a great long-running in-joke ;p )

February Goals Round-Up 2019

I really don’t want to write this one, because I’ve done so little. But when you realise how much I had to work around it’s surprising I got anything done!

I finished reading all of the Deep Editing lecture packet from Margie Lawson (though I’ve not applied it to ALL of Nothing Charming yet, only what I’ve edited so far). Speaking of Nothing Charming, I’ve edited a further 22 pages using both the Deep Editing class, the four beta readers’ feedback and my own nous. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but I only had access to a computer for ten days this month, and most of those I was working the day job, packing, cleaning, and critiquing other peoples’ work for the Vision Writers meeting this weekend.

To break down how I went with my goals directly:

  • Proceed with edits on Nothing Charming: I did 22 more pages. Progress FTW
  • Percolate some flash fiction ideas while driving on the holiday: I had two ideas while away, but I don’t know if they’ll end up being flash, they might be more my usual short story length ;p an idea’s and idea though, length doesn’t invalidate that in my opinion.

I might have managed to edit a few more pages of Nothing Charming, but I recieved a nice rejection back for Mermaid In A Jar so edited that story both with the feedback from the rejection and with the Deep Editing course. I’ll do one more read through later today and submit it to the next publisher.

bonus points for the skink in the bottom left hand corner

The massive time suck was the road trip to Sydney. While it was no good for my writing and editing it was super fun in general. I also got to see a lot of baby (or at least immature) birds that I’d never seen before. I saw baby peacocks with their peahen mother, and an immature bush turkey (it was so small and scratching up his little mound already uber-cute!). There were kangaroos at every campsite, some sidling right up to our tent. We also met some super friendly possums and land-on-your-arm lorikeets – and those are the wild animals! We also went to Taronga Zoo and the Sea Life Aquarium (dugongs!).

As much as I goaled low for February, I need to make up for the lost time. Here are my March goals:

  • Complete edits on Nothing Charming (and maybe convince friends and family to chip in for a professional edit for my birthday ;p )
  • Prepare the plot outline for ‘The Handrell War’
  • Write two new short stories
  • Get all my back catalogue stories back out there. At the end of last year I fell seriously behind and I hate sending out stories that haven’t been self-edited between each rejection – you never know what I learned while they were out and what I’ll catch on a fresh read
  • Read through the current Written by the Stars draft, lift plot points, rework with Story Equation to create new plot outline for use in Camp NaNo in April

Yes I *know* I keep saying ‘no more NaNoWriMo’, but its a checkbox on the Five Year Best Seller course, and I don’t want to skip any steps.

And lastly, a stretch goal of:

  • Edit Lovely/Lonely

The list’s a bit long, but I’m confident I can handle it, especially with Harley at kindy an extra day a week to meet the minimum attendance requirements.

Lastly, for those who want to know, here’s the books I read in February:

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